Cautionary tale for intelligent lighting users: Smart TVs are listening in on us

Big Bulber: Concerned about the possible Orwellian nature of smart lighting? Perhaps you should be, if a recent example from the smart TV industry is any indication.

We're all heading to a digital lighting future in which our connected LED lamps will automatically know when to turn on, switch off, brighten, dim, change hues and colour temperatures, flash with alerts for stock prices, sports results, wake-up alarms, burglaries or other emergencies. Yes, it seems that our lights will be able to do anything.

Including spy on us.

If that last possibility sounds far-fetched, consider this cautionary tale from the world of smart TVs: An internet-connected television from Samsung will record your voice and send your utterances around the world.

The TV includes a voice-control, which, in the course of listening for you to say something like 'watch Breaking Bad,' will also hear whatever other golden prose you happen to enunciate.

In an astute bit of scouring, The Daily Beast reported that the privacy policy for the product includes a buried sentence that reads, 'Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.'